Roger Corman filmography and biography
Date of birth: 5 April 1926, Detroit, Michigan, USA
Roger Corman biography
Roger William Corman was born April 5, 1926 in Detroit, Michigan.
Initially following in his father's footsteps, Corman studied
engineering at Stanford, but, while in school, he began to lose
interest in the profession, and developed a growing interest in
filmmaking. Upon graduation, he worked a total of three days as an
engineer (at U.S. Electrical Motors), which cemented his growing
realization that engineering wasn't for him. He quit and took a job as
a messenger for 20th-Century Fox, eventually rising to the position of
story analyst.
After a term spent studying modern English literature at Oxford and a
year spent bopping around Europe, Corman returned to the U.S. intent on
becoming a screenwriter/producer. He sold his first script in 1953,
"The House in the Sea," which was eventually filmed and released as
Highway Dragnet.
Horrified by the distance between his vision for the film and the final
product, Corman took his pay from the picture, scraped together a
little capital, and set himself up as a producer, turning out
Monster from the Ocean Floor. Corman used his next
picture, the original version of
The Fast and the Furious, to finagle a multi-picture deal
with a fledgling company called American Releasing. It would soon
change its name to American International Pictures (AIP), and, with
Corman as its major talent behind the camera, become one of the most
successful independent studios in cinema history.
With no formal training, Corman first took to the director's chair with
Five Guns West, and, over the next 15 years, he directed
53 films, mostly for AIP. Corman proved himself a master of quick,
cheap productions, turning out several movies as director and/or
producer in each of those years--nine movies in 1957, then again in
1958. His personal speed record was set with the original version of
The Little Shop of Horrors, which he shot in two days and
a night.
In the early 1960s, he began to take on more ambitious projects, gaining
a great deal of critical praise (and commercial success) from a series
of adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe (I) stories, most of them
starring Vincent Price (I). His film The Intruder
was a serious look at racial integration in the South, starring a very
young William Shatner. Critically praised, and winning a prize
at the Venice Film Festival, the movie became Corman's first commercial
flop. Corman called its failure "the greatest disappointment in my
career." As a consequence of the experience, Corman opted to avoid such
direct "message" films in the future, and resolved to express his
social and political concerns beneath the surface of overt
entertainments.
Those messages became more radical as the '60s wound to a close, and,
after AIP began re-editing his films without his knowledge or consent,
he left the company, retiring from directing to concentrate on
production and distribution through his own newly-formed company New
World Pictures. In addition to low-budget exploitation flicks, New
World dealt in distinguished art cinema from around the world, becoming
the American distributor for the films of Ingmar Bergman,
Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini,
François Truffaut, and others. Selling off New World in the
'80s, Corman has continued his work through various companies in the
years since--Concorde Pictures, New Horizons, Millenium Pictures, New
Concorde. In 1990, after the publication of his biography ("How I Made
A Hundred Movies in Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime," one of the
all-time great books on filmmaking), he returned to directing, but only
for a single film, Frankenstein Unbound
With hundreds of movies to his credit, Corman is one of the most
prolific producers the film medium has ever produced, and one of the
most successful--in his nearly-six-decades in the business, only about
a dozen of his films have failed to turn a profit. Corman has been
dubbed "The King of the Cult Film" and "The Pope of Pop Cinema," and
his filmography is packed with hundreds of remarkably entertaining
films, dozens of genuine cult classics. Corman has displayed an
unrivaled eye for talent over the years--it could almost be said that
it would be easier to name the top directors, actors, writers, creators
in Hollywood who didn't get their start with Corman than those who did.
Among those he mentored are Francis Ford Coppola,
Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson (I),
James Cameron (I), Robert De Niro,
Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante (I) and
Sandra Bullock. His influence on modern American cinema is
almost incalculable. In 2009, he was honored with an Academy Award for
Lifetime Achievement.
Roger Corman trivia
- Brother of producer Gene Corman, father of
Catherine Corman.
- (2001) Tribute in the Memory of Film section at the Flanders
International Film Festival in Ghent, Belgium.
- In the early years of the American Releasing Corporation (later American
International Pictures), he became one of their major sources of
product for distribution. He would be given a sum of money and an
advertising campaign (or somethimes just a title) and he would have to
come up with the scripts and produce the films.
- If he had to shoot a film on location, he would always try to shoot a
second film at that same location in order to spread out the costs.
- In the new decade of the 1960s, he decided that he wanted to do
something that would advance his career. When American International
offered him a sum of money to create another one of their low-budget
black-and-white double features, he countered with an offer to use the
same money to shoot a single feature in color and Cinemascope. American
International finally agreed to this offer. It led to the production of
House of Usher. The gamble paid off and the film became a
box-office hit and generated something that was unusual for an AIP
release - critical praise. This was followed by what became known as
Corman's "Poe series.".
- A running gag in Hollywood was that Corman could negotiate the
production of a film on a pay phone, shoot the film in the booth, and
finance it with the money in the change slot.
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two,
1945-1985." Pages 234-242. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
- His film The Little Shop of Horrors set a world's record
for the shortest shooting schedule for a feature film...Two days!.
- Frequently has cameos or bit parts in the films of many successful
filmmakers who got their start working for him, such as
Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante (I) and
Francis Ford Coppola.
- In Attack of the Bat Monsters, the character Francis
Gordon, as played by Fred Ballard (I), is "noticeably patterned"
after him.
- Did a brief stint of study at Oxford University.
- Society of Operating Cameramen (SOC) Recipient, Governors Award (CAMMY)
(2004).
- Uncle of Todd Corman.
- Corman, as a director and/or producer, is credited with starting and/or
mentoring the careers of many now-famous film directors, such as
Jonathan Demme, Francis Ford Coppola,
Ron Howard (I), John Sayles, James Cameron (I),
Joe Dante (I), and Martin Scorsese, and writers such as
Robert Towne, and John Sayles. He also discovered/gave
early roles to then-unknown actors and actresses such as
Jack Nicholson (I), Charles Bronson,
Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire,
Diane Ladd, and Sandra Bullock.
- Discusses his movie House of Usher in the book "A Sci-Fi
Swarm and Horror Horde" (McFarland & Co., 2010) by Tom Weaver.
- An indication of Corman's influence in Hollywood: Though no Roger
Corman-produced movies were up for Oscars at the 1974 Academy Awards,
nearly every major category featured wins or nominations by "Corman
School" graduates - those whom Corman had either started in the
business or mentored early in their careers.
- Although his films were notable for the flair and mobility with which he
composed for wide-screen, Corman revealed in Cinema Retro magazine
(Issue #18) that he hadn't originally wanted to shoot his cult Poe
series in Panavision. "I thought the anamorphic lens was better suited
to westerns, whereas I was shooting in these contained little sets. But
that was a decision made by AIP (American International Pictures). They
were convinced that just using that lens would not only make the
pictures look bigger but sound bigger in the ads".
Roger Corman quotes
- "In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the
leading lady."
- "I think there is always a political undercurrent in my films. With the
exception of "The Intruder," I tried not to put it on the surface."
- "All my films have been concerned simply with man as a social animal."
- "I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it
never turns out exactly as I hoped."